


The Other You After It All Ends

by mercurialMalcontent



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Selves, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 16:39:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6813808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercurialMalcontent/pseuds/mercurialMalcontent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tavros, having woken up alone in a vast nowhere after the game ended, finds himself and has a heart-to-heart. Literally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Other You After It All Ends

You wake up with a start, but you're not sure why. After a moment of disorientation, you yawn, stretch, and start to call out for Tinkerbull, but an itch at the back of your mind stops you. It's a niggling feeling that you've forgotten something important.

It only takes noticing that feeling for everything to come rushing back to you - Tinkerbull is dead, Alternia is dead, you are, technically, dead. Brought back to life as some game construct thing and prototyped with a bizarre excuse for a cat, but essentially, dead.

Maybe you're for-real dead again, because you sure can't see much around you. No friends, no planet, just an endless expanse of blank white. Some dreambubble this is.

You get to your feet. Yeah, okay, you're definitely dead again - you have working legs instead of a sprite tail. The lack of omnipresent game code scrolling through the back of your head was a tip-off, but the legs are what sells it for you. You don't really mind since it's not like knowing any of that did you much good. You were too pathetically grateful to be semi-alive again and too busy being bossed around, and then asleep, for you to do anything with it.

But you also aren't sneezing and itching anymore, so you're pretty okay with being dead. Your reaction to that weird cat was, in all honesty, probably psychosomatic - you were game code! How is game code allergic to cats? - but it's still a relief not to have it part of you anymore. You think, also, that if a certain someone happens to still be around, at least now she'll have to mind control you outright instead of just putting you to sleep. You don't like either thought one little bit, but if she's around it's inevitable, so why not be glad for the one that will make her expend more effort.

Ugh, why are you standing around and thinking of her. You huff a sigh at yourself and look around again. Everything still looks like a lot of nothing and your internal sense of direction is a big question mark, so you close your eyes, spin around a few times, and walk in the direction you end up pointed in.

It's a very, very long walk. You get tired, which is really unfair and kind of stupid since you're dead, and technically don't have anything to get tired with, but you can't just will it away. It's probably a personal flaw, on account of you being such a weenie, as a certain someone reminded you of recently at great length. Ugh. You make a face and keep walking anyway.

After forever and ever, you see something. No, someone! It takes even longer for you to start making out any features, and when you see horns like your own your heart skips a beat. But no, wait, even though the clothes aren't like yours, this definitely can't be Rufio, who was probably fake after all. This guy is too small. He's about your size, in fact, or probably is. You can't quite tell, because he's sitting on the not-floor. He's probably you, actually. One of the yous, anyway.

He's all in green, with a jaunty little green cap and an even jauntier red neck scarf, and whoa, those shorts are pretty short, aren't they? All the same, you think you look pretty good in them, with your working legs being all strong and sturdy like you remember them being before the accident. It's like a sassier version of your old Pupa Pan outfit, one you wouldn't have ever been daring enough to wear. The you sitting in front of you is, though. 

He's got something in his lap - a stringed musical instrument - and he's idly plucking at the strings and playing some kind of simple tune. You've never played any kind of musical instrument other than your own voice, which isn't really an instrument at all especially because you stammer so much, but it works okay for rap battles, which are a kind of music, you guess. But an actual musical instrument, no. You wonder when this you had time to learn it before he died.

You get really close and he doesn't even look up, either lost in his thoughts or ignoring you. Probably ignoring you, because you're very ignorable. It feels pretty mean for you to ignore yourself, but then, you are kind of pathetic like that, and you're not sure you can blame him. But you're also lonely, and he's you, so he'll probably understand why you interrupt him by clearing your throat and saying, "Uh, hi."

The other you looks up, and you take a step backward. He seems older than you, even though he looks the exact same age. Older and... cooler. "Uh, hey."

You waver for a moment until you decide that he wasn't mocking you, that's just the way he - you - still talks. "I was wondering, do you, um, know what's going on?"

He shrugs. "Well, the obvious conclusion is that we're dead, and either everything else is, and we're waiting to disappear, or..." He trails off and shrugs again. "But, you can stay here, if you want."

"Okay!" Ugh, there's that pathetic gratefulness again. It's even more pathetic that you're overjoyed that another iteration of you wants to spend time with you. You sit down anyway, your knees up and your arms looped loosely around them, kind of turned toward the other you but far enough away you won't knock horns if one of you turns his respective head. You fidget while he plucks out a few notes on his stringed musical instrument. "Uh, so. When did you die?"

He looks up and hums. "We were on the, uh, meteor place, hiding." You nod, and he continues. "Vriska was about to do something, uh, really fucking stupid, so I went to stop her." He grimaces. "Which was pretty fucking stupid, too, since she killed me, with my own lance."

You're kind of... wow. You don't know how to feel. That's exactly what happened to you, but you quail at the idea of thinking about Vriska that way, even though you do think about her exactly that way, buried deep down where she couldn't find it unless she really dug. But she let you come back to life, and she had a great plan, and... oh, the other you is waiting for you to say something.

"Me too," you say, with a reflexive grin. You both frown simultaneously. "But, uh, we don't come from the same timeline, obviously."

"No, we don't." Other-you frowns at his stringed instrument. "Uh, after I died, I ended up in a dreambubble with a human, the one I served that totally sick burn to. Or, uh, an iteration of him that died, anyway. He was pretty hot. I mean, cool."

The other you has a stupid grin on his face and you have to resist the urge to ask him just how the Dave human was 'hot'. You also have to resist the urge to sulk, because nothing nice happened to you after you died. You say as much. "I just died, and then I woke up, as, uh, a sprite."

"Huh." Other-you plucks out a descending chord. "I ended up a sprite, too, for a little while." His gaze goes distant and hostile. "It was, if possible, worse than being thrown off a cliff by my own brain."

You don't think you've ever seen that expression on your face before. Or, well, of course you haven't, but you don't think you've felt anything to make you make that face before. You're almost afraid to ask, but you do anyway. "Why?"

"Gamzee prototyped me, and Vriska. Together."

If you still had a blood pusher, it would have skipped a beat from betrayal. Or maybe stopped altogether from the sheer horror of it all. You hug your knees to your chest. You and Vriska. You kind of want to puke. "Oh."

Other-you laughs. "Yeah, it was, uh, pretty bad, for the five seconds it lasted." He grins at your questioning look. "We kind of, exploded? Because we hated ourselves so much? Or maybe it was because I was freaked out, and Vriska was disgusted, at knowing what it feels like to not be, uh, totally self-absorbed and basically awful. It was, uh, pretty amazing. But then I got stuck with her again."

"Wow." You're honestly impressed he managed to survive being part Vriska with his sanity intact, and somehow full of sass. You distantly remember being full of sass; it'd mostly gone away when the ability to move your legs had. "Wait. How'd Gamzee get ahold of her? I thought she was too lucky."

"She was a little too dead, for luck." He strums his musical instrument.

Your brow furrows. "My Vriska - the one in my timeline, I mean," you hurry to say as his eyes narrow, "she was, uh, pretty alive. She was the one who prototyped me." He looks so utterly disgusted, you're not sure if you should continue, but you do anyway. "And then, she prototyped me again, with some kind of cat. And then made me fall asleep, and now, here I am."

He blinks. "Heh! You got the better deal."

"Haha, yeah, I definitely did," you said, giving him a tentative grin back. "But, how did your-- the Vriska in your timeline, how did she die?"

"Terezi managed to kill her, before she went after Jack."

"Ah." You wince. "Was Terezi okay, after?"

"I don't know. I don't think so." He brushes his fingers across the strings of his instrument, and looks terribly sad.

You feel pretty sad, yourself - you hadn't seen much of Terezi as a sprite, much less talked to her, but from what she saw she acted weirdly... well, like you. It was awful. You're not sure you want to tell him.

You're both silent for a long moment. "Okay, I'm going to change the subject onto happier things, since that's something we can't change," other-you says.

"Okay? But, uh, since you ended up stuck with Vriska again--"

He holds up his hand. "I was, and that part was awful, except for the part where I got to fight the John human, and--"

"Wait, what?"

"Uh. I had something he wanted, but I didn't want to give him, so we wrestled for it for a while, because he's an insufferable loser, and seemed to think you can just take anything you want if you're bigger, and have awful logic, and stupid hair and really nice muscles."

You stare. "Uhh."

"If I ever see him again, somehow, I'm going to challenge him to wrestle, and his god tier isn't going to save him," he continues, his gaze distant and intense. "I'm going to be cleverer, and bigger, and better-looking, and have a lot more self-confidence, so pinning him should be--"

Wow, this is making you feel really uncomfortable in a way that would be interesting if you were alone. Which... you kind of are, you suppose, but you kind of aren't. "Um," you say, more loudly than you really need to. "I don't think this explains anything, like how you got that outfit, or where you learned to play that stringed instrument."

"Oh." He blinks. "Yeah, that was later, when Vriska started her dumb pirate ship." He huffs. "I learned to play this thing for fun, which I really needed, and because it annoyed her. Also because she made me wear this outfit, partly to make fun of me, I think, but also because these pants, which only get that title because I want to pretend they aren't underwear, even though they're short, and really tight, and which she made me wear, for the purposes of ogling my, uh, assets. Which was kind of awful, and gross."

Your head spins with unsaid implications. Now you feel kind of grossed out, but also curious, but also you really don't want to know. At least about the unsaid implications. "But you're still wearing them."

"Yeah, once I left I decided I liked how I look in them when Vriska isn't looking at me, so I kept them."

"You left?"

"Ohhh, yeah," he says, grinning wide. "She was, uh, throwing a big tantrum, because she didn't have something that turned out to be important, and when she ordered me to look for it, I said no and that I didn't really care about her plan." His grin somehow gets even wider as your mouth sags open. "And I told her I was tired of being her lackey, so I flew away, while flipping her off, and after a while Sollux and Feferi and Nepeta joined me--"

Flew away? With Sollux, Feferi, and Nepeta?? "Wait, when did they--"

"And I guess everyone left Vriska, because she sucked a whole lot? Or at least, that one did, because the one from your timeline turned up to the last battle, and actually did something cool." He sniffs. "But if it wasn't for me, she wouldn't have had whole army to distract Lord English, so joke's on her, sort of."

Your heart sinks. You missed it. Not that you're really surprised, you're kind of a big loser compared to this other guy, but you didn't expect to just sleep through it all and die. It's really unfair, and taking off a lot of the shine about listening to the other-you's accomplishments. "Did she..."

He shrugs. "Don't know, don't care."

"Did we win?"

"Uh, I think so. It was kind of, chaotic, but we still exist, right? So we just have to wait."

So you wait. He plays his stringed instrument, which he's pretty good at. You wonder how long he was dead and in the dreambubbles, and you wonder why you didn't get to be in the dreambubbles at all. You put your face down on your knees and let yourself feel sad and lost.

"Tavros!"

You look up with a start. A red shape flies toward you, and your heart leaps. Aradia, alive and whole and happy, with fairy wings and a form-fitting outfit and about a sweep and a half older and wow, it suits her really well, all of it--

As she comes near enough for you to see her grin, you realize you're staring and yank your gaze away. She probably isn't here for you, anyway. This other guy isn't a failure, he's the you that you wanted to be. You drop your head down against your knees again.

"Hi Tavros!"

"Hey, Aradia. Did you get to see everything break apart?"

"Yeah! It was even better than I thought it would be. Are you ready?"

There's a long, expectant pause. You look up and see the other-you already standing, his stringed musical instrument tucked under one arm. Beside him Aradia is smiling gently, her hand extended toward you to help you up.

"Ohhh, sorry," you say, and take her hand. She pulls you up effortlessly and you see that she's almost a head taller than you now. Both of you. You exchange looks with your other self and share a mutual understanding about how unfair it is that you're shorter than her, now. You have a lot of catching up to do.

Aradia keeps a hold of your hand, and extends her free hand to the the other-you. "Ready? Everyone's waiting, so we'd better go."

"Everyone?" he says, wrinkling his nose.

"Almost everyone," she amends, her smile looking a little sadder.

You exchange a look with other-you, and you think he maybe looks a little sad as well. You guess you are, too, but only a little. You're definitely ready to move on. "Let's go."

"Yeaaaah," your other self says, grinning up at Aradia.

"Okay, away we go!" Aradia's wings flutter and you all lift off into the not-sky, as effortless as a breath, and head toward eternity.


End file.
